death of a faerie
by mirai3k
Summary: You are static, like random noise, like immobility, like a charge. And you failed to follow your own lead somehow. Taichi-centric.


Disclaimer: poor students own nothing.

note: for some reason, I will always believe that this strange side of him existed at some point. Originally, this was supposed to be part of 'Days of Yore' but I think that one was better off by itself. Finished and self beta'd at 5:45 a.m. Enough said.

x

x

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**death of a faerie**

You wake up on a moving train, watch the trees come at you just as fast as you leave them behind, one after the other, then another and another, until the sun filters through the branches and you see too many spots long after you close your eyes.

This world is strange, you think. Stranger yet is the fact that it never hit you like this before.

x

You wake up lying on green grass again, again and again, white paint around you, drawing grids, drawing lines, telling you where the games end and begin, leaving you wanting to fly or fall or be somewhere else, all over again.

_I am not who you think I am._

x

You are Yagami Hikari's older brother, Yagami Susumu and Yagami Yuuko's oldest son, and the leader of seven children, seven lost little children who are no longer children and no longer lost. You are a child—_no, _you are getting older_—no, _you are static, like random noise, like immobility, like a charge that does nothing but build up and up and up, up, up. And air is all there is.

x

Maybe the truth is that you are angry. You are angry because it did not matter that you were the one leading them through this and that. Somehow, it always feels as if they were the ones that left you behind when it was time to grow up and make sense and part ways and do all the things you swore you never would. And you failed to follow your own lead somehow, and so here you are staring at the sky, left in this home-but-not, this pit in your head. In the meantime, they metamorphosed, blossomed, found themselves, came out beautiful like butterflies, the kind you still catch yourself watching by the harbour.

Maybe there is no truth at all. Or maybe there are hundreds. Or maybe only eight.

x

Too many times, you've asked Hikari how she made it look so easy, how she came back and tried to forget, tried to adapt and accept and all those things and words that never did make sense to you. And she had only smiled at you, loved you like the angel she was, loved you because it was all she could give you and all you would allow yourself to take, and told you that everything would be okay, _oniichan. Because it always was. Eventually. _Hikari was a bright light like that, burning strong when you needed her even if sometimes blindingly so.

And so, you didn't have the heart to tell her that you didn't have the strength to wait.

x

Why is it, you think, that it still feels like the electric fence isn't quite real? Once, it had been: one wrong move and everything's fried—_so don't be stupid, Yagami_, but now, you look out and they look in but it still isn't hitting you. The other explanation is that it never stopped.

Sometimes, you wake up thinking: _This isn't real. It can't be real. It can't be over. I'm not done yet. I need more time. Hell, I need another lifetime. And another and another. Please wait. Give me one more day. One more shot. One more—_

And the world spins but you spin faster till all that's left is a blur of green grass and white paint and icebergs and crests and whistles and goggles and a harmonica and red hair and golden hair and pink hair and those blue, blue eyes and butterflies and..._and_—

x

"_No, Hikari, you've got to stay home,"_ and _"No, Sora, I'm not sorry about your stupid hairclip," _and _"No, Matt, how could you possibly understand?"_

_...even though I know you tried and tried and tried and tried._

You wake up, tears running down your face, but you're not crying, no, this is not crying. This is memory and melancholy and your past and your life, and you and you and you and you, and all the pieces that make up you, but bleeding in and out of each other like wet paint on wet paper. You are being thrown together so haphazardly that the pieces won't—_can't possibly_—fit, but oh you're trying and trying to force it and break it, always doing what had to be done because someone had to.

_Try and try and try and tried..._

This is quite possibly the part where you lose your mind.

x

But then you wake up.

You always do.


End file.
